In a lengthy legal rebuttal to the U.S. government, Apple yesterday deployed an unusual defense — that its devices are susceptible to attack — to counter arguments that it should help the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) crack a terrorist’s iPhone.

Apple’s brief, the last submitted to a federal magistrate before she holds a hearing next week, focused on the government’s use of a 1789 law, the All Writs Act, to compel the company to assist law enforcement in breaking into a passcode-locked iPhone 5C.

But the brief also ranged elsewhere, including responses to assertions by the Department of Justice (DOJ) that Apple not only should be forced to aid the FBI, but that the task would be simple and the code could safely be entrusted to Apple, which would store it at its HQ.

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